


Corollary Action

by AirgiodSLV



Series: Know Thy Self, Know Thy Enemy [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-19 01:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He could have run, but he’s never liked looking over his shoulder and their world is too small to disappear in for long.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Corollary Action

It takes two days for Eames to convince Mr Grey that he knew nothing about Arthur’s intention to bolt. That alone wouldn’t have saved him, especially if the surveillance on the house had revealed what Arthur had told him on their last night together, but he also manages to persuade Mr Grey that keeping Eames on to track Arthur down again is in his best interests.

It had taken another three days after that to identify everyone in Mr Grey’s employ whose assignment had turned neatly from watching Arthur to watching Eames.

He could have run, but he’s never liked looking over his shoulder and their world is too small to disappear in for long. It’s why he knows Arthur will have to come up for air soon enough, and when he does, Mr Grey will be able to find him as easily as Eames can. So he lays plans, and he waits.

The day after that, Eames’ counter-surveillance of Mr Grey’s operation had shown someone new on the scene. Not an extractor, but someone familiar enough with the techniques to get the information required before fulfilling the second part of his contract: The assassination.

Eames waits until morning, breaks into Mr Grey’s rented beach house in Santa Cruz and puts a bullet between his eyes.

Which is how he’s gotten to where he is now, cleaning out every trace of himself and Arthur and Fort Huachuca from various files and hard drives, breaking or melting down everything he can’t be sure of erasing completely. There are almost certainly back-ups in existence somewhere, but Eames doesn’t know how to find them. Hopefully this will be enough.

He’d lost track of Arthur the second day after he’d run, when Arthur had deviated from the escape route Eames had set up for him and disappeared somewhere between Rio and Jakarta. It’s exactly what Eames would have done, erred toward paranoia and the darker side of caution, but it’s still frustrating for all of that, still a dead end. Arthur has dropped off the grid, and Eames already knows he won’t resurface until he’s willing to be found.

He also knows that Arthur won’t risk contact with him, not even an anonymous drop in one of his bank accounts or a postcard to one of his many post office boxes. Arthur probably knows fifty ways to pass a message to Eames, and he won’t use any of them.

Eames estimates that he has another fifteen-to-twenty minutes before Mr Grey’s pet assassin shows up with the bug team on the morning shift at Eames’ hotel. He hasn’t had much time, but he’s been both thorough and overly cautious. No one ought to be able to link him to the body behind the table.

Clean-up complete, he takes the back way out, black leather gloves leaving no trace on the doorknob or on the gun he leaves behind at the scene. Then he torches the place.

Arthur would have done a neater job of it, but that can’t be helped. In any event, Eames doesn’t want to be particularly circumspect about this. If he’d wanted Mr Grey’s body to disappear, he could have made that happen, quietly and with alacrity. He wants this on the evening news, in the papers; a ripple that will fade away quickly but which will leave traces nonetheless.

With Arthur’s far-reaching information network, there’s no way he can miss this. He might not know Mr Grey’s alias, but he’ll be able to connect enough dots to trace the death back to the man who’d hired Eames to come after him. He’ll probably even be able to read between the lines and translate ‘suspicious circumstances’ to mean Eames had a hand in it.

Eames leaves a burning beach house behind him in Santa Cruz, clouds of black smoke rising like a beacon, carrying a message to Arthur across the globe:

 _It’s safe to come home._


End file.
